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In this article, you will find recipes for a pound cake made in a loaf, a bundt cake, and layer cake. You’ll find scratch recipes and cakes that you make from a mix with zucchini added. These are very good recipes.
I harvested the last of my zucchini the other day. In Idaho, that’s pushing the se
ason a bit. But I love zucchini and I covered it every night and it just kept going.
Zucchini and Chocolate
If you still have zucchini, make a chocolate cake. If you have zucchini in the freezer, make a chocolate cake. The moistness of the zucchini marries with the chocolate into an almost fudge-like texture.
But if zucchini and chocolate is not your thing, make this scrumptious zucchini bread.
See how to make Cinnamon Burst Zucchini Bread
What You’ll Need
Ramstadt Breda Rich Dark Cocoa
Large bag of Cinnamon Chips
Dark Chocolate Chips
The Number One Problem with Zucchini
Now, before we get started, the number one problem when baking with zucchini is the water. Zucchini is mostly water. How much water you drain from your zucchini affects your baking.
For solutions, read this free book: The Last Zucchini Cookie
The Recipes
You will need a Fudgy Baby Cakes Mix for this recipe.
Get 2 FREE Baby Cakes Mixes!
Chocolate Zucchini Pound Cake from a Mix
We used our Fudgy Baby Cake Mix and patterned this after the Cinnamon Burst Sour Cream Zucchini Bread recipe. The fudgy cake mix comes with mini chocolate chips in the mix so it is very similar to the zucchini bread with cinnamon chips.
1 Fudgy Baby Cakes Mix
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 cups freshly grated zucchini
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Prepare a 9 x 5-inch bread pan by greasing and flouring or lining with parchment paper.
In your stand-type mixer, beat the cake mix, oil, eggs, and zucchini for about three minutes. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for 58 minutes or until done. Let the loaf cool for 20 minutes in the pan and then remove it to a wire rack. Refrigerate overnight before serving.
Chocolate Zucchini Pound Cake from Scratch
We baked this cake in a bundt pan. It makes a great cake but we had trouble with it sticking even in our nonstick bundt pans. We solved the problem in three steps:
Grease the pan well with shortening,
Dust the pan with cocoa to help it release,
Use a soft-bladed silicone spatula to break the sides loose from the pan.
Bundt cakes tend to be fragile, especially while still warm. As they cool, the cake sets and is less fragile. We let the cake cool for ten minutes before removing the cake from the pan. I would suggest setting your timer for ten minutes.
The recipe calls for dry buttermilk powder. You do not need to reconstitute the buttermilk but can add the dry buttermilk to the mix. The water comes later.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup Ramstadt Breda Rich Dark Cocoa or equal
1/3 cup dry buttermilk powder
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1 cup dark chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Prepare a standard 9 1/2-inch bundt pan.
Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cocoa, and powdered buttermilk together in a medium bowl.
With your stand-type mixer, mix the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and water. Mix in about half of the dry ingredients and then the vegetable oil. Add the remainder of the dry ingredients and mix.
Fold in the grated zucchini, pecans, and about half of the chocolate chips.
Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle the remaining chocolate chips over the batter. Bake for 55 minutes or until done. Cool on a wire rack for ten minutes before removing the cake from the pan.
Chocolate Zucchini Layer Cake from a Mix
The chocolate zucchini layer cake that we posted last week was remarkably good but we wanted a larger layer cake. We used Dad’s Favorite Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix which is larger cake mix; quite a bit bigger than the mixes that you find in the store and denser and moister. And it has chocolate pieces in the mix. We added nuts and zucchini.
When we developed this recipe, we kept increasing the zucchini and decreasing the liquids until we had it loaded to the max with zucchini. The zucchini disappears into the chocolate cake but the more zucchini, the moister and denser it is. And when you get it to the max, there is so much zucchini that it doesn’t hold together well and you can’t make a shapely layer cake. We dropped back a half cup from the max and had a perfect two-layer cake.
We put Bavarian cream between the layers. With the Bavarian cream between the layers, the cake was incredibly moist and yet held its shape and was attractive. We used pecans and frosted it with premade fudgy frosting. The folks in the store loved it.
See the chocolate fudge layer cake mix
See the premade Bavarian cream
See the premade fudge frosting
1 Dad’s Favorite Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups fresh grated zucchini
1 cup chopped pecans
4 eggs
Premade Bavarian cream
Premade fudge frosting
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Prepare two nine-inch pans by greasing or lining them with parchment paper.
In your stand-type mixer, beat the cake mix, oil, eggs, and zucchini for about three minutes. Fold in the pecans. Scrape the batter into the prepared pans.
Bake for 27 to 30 minutes or until done. Let the cake cool in the pans on a wire rack.
To fill and frost the cake, place one layer on a cake stand. Squeeze and spread a layer of Bavarian cream about 1/4-inch thick onto the cake layer. Place the second layer on the Bavarian cream. Frost the cake.
Chocolate Zucchini Cake from Scratch
This cake is made in a 10 x15-inch pan. It’s very good and made with Ramstadt Breda Rich Dark Cocoa which has three times the cocoa butter of the most popular store brand.
Get the cocoa. Read the reviews. It makes a world of difference.
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Ramstadt Breda dark cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup buttermilk powder
1/2 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 325°F.
Grease a 10 x 15-inch baking pan or line with parchment paper.
Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
In your stand-type mixer, cream the sugar and butter together. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and zucchini.
Starting with the dry ingredients, mix in dry ingredients alternately with the water in two or three additions.
Fold in the chocolate chips and nuts. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
Bake until done, about 40 to 45 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Frost as desired.
Kelli’s Old-Fashioned Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Kelli Tracy, who worked in our test kitchen, has been making this hand-me-down chocolate zucchini cake for years. She was generous enough to share this with us. It is dense, almost like brownies.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Ramstadt Breda Rich Dark Cocoa
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease or line with parchment paper a 9 x 13-inch pan.
Mix the dry ingredients together.
Add the vegetable oil, vanilla, water, and grated zucchini. Mix well. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for 30 minutes or until done. Cool on a wire rack. After cooling, frost as desired.
In Case You Missed It: Last time we talked about “How to Make a Simple Farmer’s Chowder.” You can read it here!
About the Author
Dennis Weaver has burned food from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Miami, Florida. He is the founder of The Prepared Pantry in Rigby, Idaho and the author of How to Bake: The Art and Science of Baking available as an E-book or as a Kindle book on Amazon.
Dennis lives in Rigby, Idaho, with his wife, Merri Ann. They have five wonderful children and six beautiful granddaughters.